Sesako saw death coming. It was coming in the form of a man who had already killed himself to kill him.

Gakonga threw himself into the cultivator. Held the arm of the cultivator. In the horrifying light, the tattoos of the Great Ones on his arms glittered and moved like living things. He forced the hand holding the cultivator’s core against his own body, blowing himself up and the imperial cultivator.

The two corpses began to freely fall downwards.

So stupid.

He’d never come that close to death, but Sesako was a veteran of many battles. After the frozen in the instant of shock when the trap was revealed, instinct and adrenaline took over.

He tossed aside the halberd and the crossbow, and he pulled from his scabbard a sword.

They needed to fight free.

They were trapped.

Another second profound soul had been hidden amongst the stones on the edge of the field, and with the help of the purified cultivators, and the other profound soul who'd commanded the firing cluster, they’d stretched out a giant net of dense wires wrapped in thickly enchanted mage silk.

The net glowed blue with thick power.

The logic of the trap was simple: Sesako and the men with him could not flee back to the city because they were trapped against the net. If they tried to flee around it, they would head right into the crossbows and spears of one of the approaching guard forces, only a half-minute away.

But if they tried to force their way through the net, they would get stuck and slowed for long enough for that same reserve force to catch and crush them all

One man was shot through with a dozen crossbow bolts when he became stuck in the cording, and the body was left there, floating helplessly.

The group that had exploded out from the stones had twice the strength of the sortie that he’d led to its doom, and his cultivators were desperately trying to hold them off.

Already a half dozen more were gravely wounded or dead, in addition to Gakonga.

They’d all die here.

Sesako hurled himself fast at the net, at the farthest point from where the cultivators who had established it held their positions.

The crossbows, the bolts enchanted to move terribly fast, and to ignore the air, spat at him, but his armor held against that, each blow bruising him, and nicking at the supply of magical power stored in his cores.

He chopped at the wiring in the net.

Blow. Blow. Blow.

The enemy reinforcements were already there.

Second by second men he’d led to this death trap died.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Five imperial cultivators with purified cores had broken through the defensive line the Yatamo cultivators had formed, where they combined their defensive shielding to maximize their ability to divert the crossbow bolts away.

In his desperation to open enough of a hole in the net for his people to escape, he’d not noticed them coming for him until they were almost too close.

He jerked himself aside, moving closer to the bald profound soul at the center of the net.

Two of these three had the spell to rip their cores out fully prepared. Their faces were ready, maybe even eager, to die.

They believed in their cause enough to die for it. And they were old men, no longer in their prime, who no longer had a lengthy future to look forward to in any case, and their families would gain great rewards for their sacrifice, especially if Sesako died.

His father had been like that, when he died in the same way to strike the emperor and protect the Great Ones.

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Behind them two of the others were there to help propel them close enough to strike Sesako, and the fifth was there to cast spells to slow Sesako down.

Terror.

He had to destroy them. He had to get through them. And then he had to cut through the net.

Had to.

Otherwise, everyone would die.

This was his fault.

He’d killed them all.

Above him their defensive formation was now solid and holding well. Even greatly outnumbered, his countrymen and fellow clansmen would not be killed easily or quickly.

But to the last one they would be killed, and they would not kill any of their enemy in turn.

Forward. Attack.

Like Sesako hoped, the group of purified cores attacking him flinched back.

They were not used to being attacked in turn by the profound soul. It was simply the way that this warfare went, profound souls fled and avoided ever coming close to these attack groups, because they saw themselves as too precious to die, and because they were too precious to die — for every thousand cultivators who completed the core of their second dantian, less than one of them would manage to open their third.

That shock and surprise gave him his chance.

The cultivator on the left had neglected his defenses while he kept the suicide spell ready to cast instantly. The other cultivator with him also did not move quickly enough.

Sword strike. Melee battle. Killing with hand weapons.

That was rare.

The head went toppling away.

A blast of vicious magic powered by an incantation and a gesture of Sesako’s left hand blasted the cultivator who'd been supporting him far away.

The remaining three flinched back.

They were alert, but Sesako was not worried.

The danger was against two of them. As he dodged one of them, the other would get close enough to slam his core into Sesako.

Cautiously Sesako flew around them, back to the hole he’d half hacked in the net. Keeping part of his attention on them, he struck the net again, and then again. They floated closer. Still ample room for him to dodge.

One more blow. Then a wide enough hole for escape.

The stars sparkled high above; the moon was red with war tonight.

The imperial cultivator jerked his core out of chest, ripping open a hole in his being where the second dantian ought to be.

His comrade hurled him forward towards Sesako.

And Sesako was confused as he dodged to the side, they must know this would not work, and —

He was stuck.

He’d forgotten the cultivator of the profound soul. The bald man had used an invisibility working to sneak close in the dark. He’d cast a holding on Sesako. Sesako couldn’t escape. He’d be stuck for long enough that the dying suicide cultivator could catch him.

Time slowed down.

Half a kilometer away, where the bald cultivator had been, an object floated that looked exactly like him. The blue power still pulsated from it, but the mind governing it was gone.

He was going to die.

This time he was really going to die.

Perception of time slowed down impossibly far, slower than he’d ever experienced before. An eternity had passed. The other cultivator was only a few inches closer.

He was a tortoise. The cultivator holding his second core, blazing in his hand, moved closer.

Desperation. Need. Anger.

Cleverness.

Feelings from the other.

And then Sesako’s whole body blazed red.

The fourth dantian fully opened.

The other, the imposter, the hated other, he had somehow done it — he’d somehow in this moment of desperate need found the way to make it work, and the willpower to endure the pain that it must require.

The red power was ten times as dense and potent as the blue power that Sesako ordinarily used and that the profound soul holding him in place used.

The holding broke. Sesako now hurled himself towards the profound soul, breaking free of his bonding, and of the weaker bonding that the purified cores had placed on him.

The dying purified core holding his core flew past him, and he collided into the net, his life force ebbing away second by second now that he had destroyed its substance.

And now it was his enemy who was too startled to move.

The profound soul’s eyes widened to see that he suddenly faced a celestial when this ought to be impossible. The only one who had ever achieved the fourth core was his master.

He brought his hands together and threw himself backwards while weaving a defensive spell that would ward him from the killing force of the blows and turn them into momentum that would hurl him further away from Sesako.

But the poor man had forgotten his own trap.

He threw himself into the net. Stuck.

He completed the defensive warding as Sesako reached him, sword high over his head.

The first red rimmed blow was deflected by the warding. He was hurled into the net. The force drained the net, and the blue power infusing it noticeably dimmed.

The second blow ripped apart the man’s breastplate. He was driven again into the net. More of the net’s power was eaten away.

The third blow struck his chest.

The profound soul managed to reinforce his body and the ruins of the armor sufficiently that the strike did not bite deep.

Even at this point the profound soul would have escaped with his life — if he hadn’t been trapped by the net.

Sesako hacked at him again, and again. Streams of blood were hurled away from his sword. He wrecked the remaining bits of armor defending him.

With the tenth blow the man finally died, just when the power in the net was fully exhausted.

An eleventh blow destroyed the remains of the net, and Sesako turned to call out to what was left of his friends to flee with him.

But he found that they had already formed up near him, warding him from any of the purified cores coming from behind with this group, and now, with what nearly amounted to a victory, they fled in good order, collecting their dead as they went.

Now that the stress of battle and death had ended, the other’s will to keep the power flowing through the fourth dantian failed. With a snap it shut closed, just a dribble of the crimson power still flowing through.

Sesako fell suddenly unconscious.